'Secretariat' Review: Channels and Surpasses 'Blind Side'

Anyone who pays attention to the movies knows that Hollywood loves to mine the same ideas over and over again. Whether via sequels, remakes or reboots, the big-studio machinery will take hold of nearly any idea that clicks with viewers and immediately find a variation of it to throw into theatres as quickly as possible.

Even though it’s not a sequel, “Secretariat” enters the marketplace this weekend cut squarely from the mold of last year’s surprise smash hit “The Blind Side.” Take a true story about a sport that even women can love, spotlight the warmth and importance of family amid struggles, add a feisty female into the lead role and stir.

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You can’t blame Disney for making the effort here; after all, “Blind Side” grossed more than $250 million in the US alone and scored a Best Actress Oscar for its star, Sandra Bullock. But thankfully, Disney has improved on that film’s Lifetime-movie tendencies and delivered a film that is more impressively shot, compellingly written and richly performed than its predecessor – resulting in a film that should easily make a run for Oscar gold come winter.

Since “Secretariat” is named after the famed 1973 Triple Crown-winning horse, the film centers on the equine’s owner, Penny Chenery, and her quest to keep the steed after her father dies and the temptation exists to sell the horse off quickly to settle his estate’s massive tax problems. In time-honored Oscar-baiting tradition, Penny (perfectly played by Diane Lane in a career-best performance), Penny tells everyone that her daddy didn’t raise a quitter, and soon she’s teamed up with eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich in a rare role that doesn’t rely on an insane amount of swearing).

Together, Penny and Lucien quickly transform their young colt into a winner that is named Horse of the Year in its first season out on the racetrack. However, the coveted honor brings vastly greater expectations, and the duo find themselves under incredible pressure to win the Triple Crown the next season: if they win, they score millions more than they need to get out of debt. But if they lose even one of the sport’s three greatest races, Secretariat will lose so much value that Penny’s family will be left millions of dollars in debt.

It’s hard to imagine higher stakes, yet there wouldn’t be a movie about this horse if it didn’t make history pulling off its needed victories. But what makes this film most impressive is the fact that even when its end result is a foregone conclusion and widely known to history, director Randall Wallace and writer Mike Rich still manage to elicit nail-biting tension and exhilarating uplift right to the final moments.

“Secretariat” may be cut from the same cloth as “The Blind Side,” but it surpasses that film on several fronts. Despite its backdrop in the world of high school football, “Blind” had a surprising lack of gridiron action. “Secretariat,” on the other hand, absolutely relies on the quality of its racing scenes and impressively delivers – including one sequence in which Wallace brilliantly decides to show a race from the perspective of Penny’s family watching a race on television from afar, which enables Wallace to employ actual footage of his heroic horse in action and gives modern-day viewers a chance to witness Secretariat’s astonishing speed for themselves.

This film also avoids the sometimes overbearing sentimentality of “Blind,” since it doesn’t hinge on a heavy-handed message to make its point. And while “Blind” seemed to rest solely on the shoulders of Sandra Bullock’s impressive lead performance, Wallace surrounds Lane and Malkovich with a deep bench of talent that seems to include nearly every great character actor working today, including Scott Glenn, Dylan Baker, Dylan Walsh, James Cromwell and Fred Dalton Thompson.

That rich cast is a testament to the strength of Mike Rich’s screenplay, one in which Rich builds on his record of uplifting sports movies such as “The Rookie.” He also pulls off the impressive feat of not needing a single swear word or other impressive element to tell his tale, making it a perfect family film, while in no way making the film seem sugar-coated or condescending. He also gets in some solid digs against the hippie and anti-war movements of the film’s timeframe. Put it all together, and “Secretariat” shows that sometimes a solid, sturdy ride can still beat the flash in the pan entertainment around it by a country mile.